Editor's pick

Have you noticed that lately some people are trying to coin the terms "Dark UX" or "Dark Design Patterns"? Not only that, but also trying to put in the UX account some nasty psychological or cheap tricks. We are User Experience Designers and our core objective is to create delightful and seamless experiences for the user. Let's be clear here, if you do any of the following below I suggest a new term: "A**hole Design".

Psychology in UX

In his famed experiments, Ivan Pavlov trained his dogs to associate mealtime with the ring of a bell. Pavlov found he could elicit an involuntary physical response in his dogs with a simple jingle. Every time his bell rang, the dogs began to salivate. Today, the beeps, buzzes, rings, flags, pushes, and pings blasting from our phones prompt a similar response. They are the Pavlovian bell of the 21st century and they get us to check our tech incessantly.

However, as powerful as these psychological cues are, people are not drooling dogs. Your product’s users can easily uninstall or turn off notifications that annoy them.

As humans, we tend to rely heavily on one piece of information when we make decisions. We often anchor on the first piece of information we are introduced to and judge all subsequently received information in relation to it.
The first piece of information offered automatically becomes the anchor, from which subsequent judgements are made. Anchoring is the persuasive practice of creating a reference point around which we as designers want all other information to be judged and compared to.

Persuasive Design

You must learn about human psychology to design compelling user experiences. If you understand how the human mind works, it’s easier to get people’s attention and keep it. It’s also easier to get them to take some form of action (like subscribing or buying). But how do you find out what goes on inside the mind of your users? Well that’s where psychological triggers come in. They’re invisible forces that influence and persuade people. And when you use them in your design you can get more people to say yes to what you’re asking.

In this post I’ll break down psychological experiments and academic research into simple, actionable steps that can help you design better experiences that lead to more sales online.

User Research & Psychology

Do you need numerical data about your product’s user experience, but you aren’t sure where to start? The first step is choosing the right tool. Check out this list of the most popular types of quantitative methods. Many UX professionals gravitate towards qualitative (qual) methodologies, which are widely perceived as being easier and cheaper than quantitative (quant) research. They shy away from the intimidating prospect of larger sample sizes and statistics associated with quant.

Human Memory

Designing for Human Memory... Knowing how human memory works allows us to improve the users’ experience. This UX Knowledge Base Sketch summarizes some of the most significant concepts of human memory for user experience design.

Human, AI and UX

The secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home — is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.
However AI is framed from a more Utopian idea focused on the elimination of inconvenient work: the kind of work that is supposedly unnecessary in our pursuit of more lofty goals. AI is like American fast food drive-thru on steroids.

Books and Resources 📖

Case Study Club is a side project launched in 2015 by Jan Wennesland. Working as a designer, I've always been interested in studying others thoughts behind their work. Constantly trying to improve, I've found this to be a very powerful learning experience. I want to share this amazing collection of case studies with the rest of the community.